The Science of Relationships
[Music]
i’ve often heard the phrase
life imitates art or is more apt in my
case
art imitates life however i never
realized
just how powerful that connection can be
until in the middle of an interview
when someone asked me about my life and
how it’s affected my work
as a scientist who studies data
objectively collected from others
i never took time to pause and reflect
on my own life and this beautiful
connection
you see i’m a relationship researcher i
was a former full-time academic
with a research lab devoted to studying
the science of relationships
and am now currently focusing on the
therapeutic side of relationship work
my goal has been to study from a
scientific perspective
what love is why some relationships
thrive
while others are doomed to fail as well
as to carefully analyze and shed light
on the attachment bond or our human
connection
after several years of focusing on this
work and meeting an incredible network
of people along the way
i have a better appreciation for the
relationships in my own life
in hindsight i have a better
understanding of how deeply personal
this journey has been for me
today i’m here to discuss the science of
relationships
as well as how looking back on our past
relationships
can enhance both our current and future
connections
in my early to mid 20s i was in a
relationship that went through the
stages of dating to marriage to
divorce all very quickly and very
publicly
as we live in a social media age each
party
and carefully curated component of the
planning process played out on my
facebook feed
then once it all came crashing down
i spent hours days even weeks
painstakingly sifting through the
remnants of my past
with the goal of erasing what was and
what could have been
i was the first of my friends to get
married and the first to get divorced
and this all made for some very
interesting gossip
fast forward a few years to my
experimental psychology classroom
in which i’m grasping at straws to
cultivate an appreciation
for statistics and research methodology
in one of those classes that students
love to hate or as many call it a
necessary evil of the major
to generate interest and help students
see the applicability of research to the
real world
and not just a grade i pulled from all
of the subject areas
neuropsychology educational psychology
and the list goes on i realized that as
soon as i began to discuss relationships
blank stares turned into active
participation
as students began to ask the questions
about the important relationships in
their lives
just then i realized something i got
them engaged
and i got them to care
relationship science is a
multi-disciplinary field
consisting of subject areas such as
psychology
biology sociology anthropology and
philosophy
a variety of perspectives all converge
to help explain the complexity
and awesomeness that is love
so now that we know a little bit about
what relationship science is
let’s examine how many people there are
out there for us to love
which involves estimating our pool of
eligible partners
the drake equation conceptualized by dr
frank drank in 1961
is an equation used to estimate the
number of civilizations
capable of supporting communicative
extraterrestrial life in the milky way
galaxy
yes you heard that correctly it’s an
equation used to help us to determine
how many aliens are out there the
equation is an approximation
and the thought behind it is that the
series of over and under estimations
will eventually cancel each other out
and provide us with a relatively
accurate final number
dr peter backus economics lecturer in
the uk
later adopted this equation to determine
how many women
they were out there for him to love by
using available population parameters
and the specifics as to what he was
looking for in a mate
while i’m happily married i’d like to
illustrate this for you
using the information that i used when i
entered the wonderful
yet sometimes agonizingly frustrating
world
of online dating now i was looking to
meet someone in my geographic location
and based upon information from the u.s
census bureau
new york city has eight million eight
thousand
two hundred and seventy eight people
that i can potentially date
forty seven point thirty eight percent
of these people are male
which equates to a total of three
million seven hundred and ninety four
thousand
three hundred and twenty two potential
men that i could date
of these people 15.77 percent are
between the ages of 35 and 44
leaving me with 598
364 potential partners
education is important to me and being
that 37.4
of people have a bachelor’s degree or
higher this leaves me with
223 788 potential partners
now i’m not that religious but i am of
the jewish faith
and religion is more likely to become
important when thinking about traditions
or a future family
since 13 of the population in new york
city is jewish
this leaves me with 29 ninety two
potential partners
fifty three percent of the population is
unattached and
being that i want my partner and i to be
in an exclusive relationship
this leaves me with fifteen thousand
four hundred and eighteen
potential men now i’m five nine
and i tend to feel uneasy when i’m much
taller than my partners
no disrespect to anyone who’s shorter
but this is something that makes me
personally uncomfortable so since 67
percent of men are five nine or taller
this leaves me with ten thousand three
hundred and thirty potential partners
now peter back is said that he would
find five percent of women attractive
and five percent of women would find him
attractive
however dr hannah fry mathematician and
the author of mathematics of love
noted that this number was much too
conservative and instead
opted for 20 percent so
if i’m likely to find twenty percent of
these men attractive that’s two thousand
sixty six men
twenty percent are likely to find me
attractive that’s four hundred and
thirteen men
and twenty percent i’m likely to get
along with in terms of personality
out of the 8 million 8 278
people in new york city that i could
potentially date
this leaves me with 82 men yes
82 men now you can choose to view this
either
positively or negatively for those of
you who view it negatively
finding your match is kind of like
finding a needle in a haystack
in hindsight had i realized just how
quickly the dating pool shrank
i might not have approached online
dating so optimistically
so maybe ignorance is bliss however
if you choose to view the glass as half
full think about how
just incredibly rare and special the
person you’re with
or meant to be with actually is
silver lining so now that we know
how many people are out there for us to
love
how do we set ourselves up for
relationship success
a big component of relationship
satisfaction and success
involves effectively communicating with
the people we love
renowned psychologists john gottman who
studied healthy and unhealthy
relationships
discussed the four horsemen which are
criticism
contempt defensiveness and stonewalling
the presence of these horsemen during an
argument is so detrimental
as it can escalate the negative
interaction between partners during an
argument
and it can even predict divorce it’s not
what we
fight about that leads to problems but
how we fight
i’ll say that again it’s not what we
fight about
but how we fight that matters
many of the couples that i work with
once having learned about the four
horsemen note
that had they been better prepared to
effectively communicate with their
partners
their relationships may have fared
better hindsight’s 20 20.
research supports this in that just by
learning about the four horsemen
you can enhance your relationships so
you can use the science
to examine your communication and
improve your relationships going forward
criticism involves attacking your
partner’s character
for example you left the clothes on the
floor
because you’re such a slob content
is criticism coming from a place of
superiority
think criticism with a bit of sarcasm on
top
an example is well of course you didn’t
get that promotion
you can’t even get it together at home
this will last with your partner long
after the fight is over
defensiveness is when a person rather
than owning what he
or she or they did wrong calls his her
or their partner out on something else
so rather than owning that you left your
clothes in a pile on the floor you say
well what did you expect me to do you
took forever getting ready this morning
i’ll get to stonewalling in a bit to
counteract criticism and contempt
use i statements or eye language
in which you focus on the behavior
rather than attacking your partner
so you may say when you leave your
clothes on the floor
i get upset because i’m already running
late trying to get out of the house in
the morning
yes this does take longer but by doing
this
you’re letting your partner know what
you’re thinking as well as how his her
or their behavior
is affecting you it doesn’t mean you’ll
see eye to eye
but by doing this you’re communicating
what the issue is and why it’s upsetting
to you
to counteract defensiveness own it
whatever it is if you own what you do
wrong
hopefully your partner will follow suit
and then you’ll create a culture of
appreciation and respect
finally we have stonewalling now i’m
sure many of you have heard of the fight
or flight response
but it’s actually fight fight or flood
fight flight or flood
if you get nothing else out of this talk
today you now have that fun little
tongue twister
stonewalling or flooding is when a
person completely checks out
it’s a situation in which in the middle
of an argument
a person goes completely blank and looks
as if they’re not even processing
because in that moment they can’t
so what does the other person do they
get louder
and angrier further escalating that
argument
instead take a break
yes for many this is difficult
especially when in the middle of a
heated argument
but by doing this you’re able to bring
that physiological arousal level down
so that you can come back to one another
and have a much more productive and
meaningful conversation
so just learning about the four horsemen
can enhance your relationships
you can use this information to examine
your communication
rather than letting these tactics erode
it forcing you to look back
on what could have been
so as you can see this amazing science
has implications for our everyday lives
but as art and science imitates life
my journey into this field was a result
of a personal struggle
could i have used the principles of
relationship science to have avoided
heartache
perhaps but remember it’s always easy
to clearly evaluate a situation after it
happens
as noted psychologist and economist
daniel kahneman put it
everything makes sense in hindsight
i’ve made the conscious decision not to
look back
and continually over analyze my past
which
i often have the tendency to do
instead i’ve turned my past into a
positive future
in my current role i help others ask the
meaningful
questions they have about the important
relationships in their lives
the most valuable lesson that i’ve
learned is that your past
shapes your present and sets a
trajectory for your future
so you can use the knowledge of the
value gained in hindsight
to help inform the decisions you make in
your current and future relationships
now that’s something worth re-examining
the past four
thank you
you